In The Singularity is Near, Ray Kurzweil looked at the natural history of information processing and discovered that the rate of increase in the ability to manipulate information has a logarithmic slope; in other words, the rate of information processing ability increases at an exponential rate. Furthermore, he suggested that within the next 30-40 years we will reach a time at which the pace of technological advance (the current embodiment of information processing) will become so rapid as to make further predictions impossible, a point which he called "The Singularity".
Kevin Kelly, as part of an article critiquing certain aspects of Kurzweil's idea, described the Singularity in fairly accessible terms. (Vinge refers to Verner Vinge, who originated the idea of an Artificial Intelligence Singularity):
In Vinge’s analysis, at some point not too far away, innovations in computer power would enable us to design computers more intelligent than we are, and these smarter computers could design computers yet smarter than themselves, and so on, the loop of computers-making-newer-computers accelerating very quickly towards unimaginable levels of intelligence. This progress in IQ and power, when graphed, generates a rising curve which appears to approach the straight up limit of infinity. In mathematical terms it resembles the singularity of a black hole, because, as Vinge announced, it will be impossible to know anything beyond this threshold. If we make an AI which in turn makes a greater AI, ad infinitum, then their future is unknowable to us, just as our lives have been unfathomable to a slug. So the singularity became a black hole, an impenetrable veil hiding our future from us.
In his response to Kelly's article, Kurzweil wrote a clarifying post and used the Internet to illustrate the concept of a "transformative technology":
Consider the Internet. When the Arpanet went from 10,000 nodes to 20,000 in one year, and then to 40,000 and then 80,000, it was of interest only to a few thousand scientists. When ten years later it went from 10 million nodes to 20 million, and then 40 million and 80 million, the appearance of this curve looks identical (especially when viewed on a log plot), but the consequences were profoundly more transformative. There is a point in the smooth exponential growth of these different aspects of information technology when they transform the world as we know it. [Emphasis mine-SW]
One of Kurzweil's great insights was that almost any information technology, when looked at over time, shows the same pattern of exponential growth, with minimal change until a threshold is hit, followed by explosive transformations.
What does this have to do with Apocalyptic cults and irrational reactions to disruption fueled angst?
Allow me a slight digression. When I was young, rotary telephones were used to dial exchanges based on local areas. (CO2-3991, for example, stood for COngress 2-3991; COngress was the exchange.) Long distance calls were routed through a switchboard where an operator mechanically, then electronically, switched my call to a new line which connected to a distant exchange. The process was relatively slow, labor intensive, and expensive. Long distance calls were done late at night and were kept short. You typically kept your phone for many, many years. The first, very simple, telephonic device was invented ~1860; Alexander Graham Bell made the first bi-directional phone call on March 10, 1876 and the first long distance call (~16 miles) five months later. The rotary phone was invented in 1888. The first trans-Atlantic call was in 1926. The push button phone began to replace rotary phones in my teens and early 20's, the 1970's. The pace of innovation began to increase rapidly after that and by today, my children all have cell phones and eschew land lines, they expect to upgrade every two years (they can upgrade as often as they like when they are paying for it, but when I am paying, two years is it) and expect their new phones to have new capabilities that their current phone doesn't have.
There is no question the telephone has been a transformative technology. Entire convenience and wealth generating industries now exist which were unimaginable when Alexander Graham Bell made his phone call. Phones are merging with computers (they already are computers, but not in the conventional sense); as all devices become connected and enmeshed in networks, new capabilities and structures are certain to arise; many of these structures are currently unimaginable.
Returning to Kelly's arguments, he makes the point that from within the Singularity, it would be imperceptible to an observer:
As the next level of organization kicks in, the current level is incapable of perceiving the new level, because that perception must take place at the new level. From within our emerging global cultural, the coming phase shift to another level is real, but it will be imperceptible to us during the transition. Sure, things will speed up, but that will only hide the real change, which is a change in the rules of the game. Therefore we can expect in the next hundred years that life will appear to be ordinary and not discontinuous, certainly not cataclysmic, all the while something new gathers, until slowly we recognize that we have acquired the tools to perceive that new tools are present - and have been for a while.
I think Kelly is correct in part but misses something powerful. I mentioned my personal experience with the telephone for a reason. For the first 40 years of my life, my expectations were that my phone would be a recognizable instrument that performed a particular, though limited function, perhaps with better and better quality as time went on. Contrast that with today, where my expectation is that my next phone will have capabilities that I currently do not have: I will be able to watch movies and TV shows, play music, surf the web, blog, get directions, find restaurants, find people in the area who share my interests, etc. Every day it seems there are new uses for the phone; I expect it and look forward to it. Furthermore, I expect the cost of the services to go down over time (although my phone bill will probably not decrease, primarily because each new service has its own costs associated.) Despite being a bit of an early adopter myself, my children already are familiar and comfortable with technology that is a mystery to me. My parents can barely manage to get on-line; my children use new technology without even a thought of opening the user's manual. I live on the edge of the vertiginous sense of nothing being predictable any longer.
When all the assumptions that you have grown up with are suddenly shown to be in question, or unsustainable, the mind rebels. Those who cannot adapt, struggle to keep or regain their equilibrium. This is part of the tension we see whenever traditional ways clash with modernity. The Islamists, with their longing for a fantasied, blissful past or a Utopian future of blissful Union, have thrown in their lot with fantasy and irrationality. This is recognizable to most Civilized people. The idea of decapitating enemies is a primitive, atavistic, threat. It is even becoming ever more difficult for the proponents of multi-culturism to ignore the inhumanity of the murderers and torturers of Islamic fascism.
While we can see in the most unmistakable terms the irrational response of the terrorists to disruptive change, we have a harder time seeing the effects within ourselves.
Our National and Civilizational discourse has become increasingly irrational. At least part of the genesis of discontent with Bush has to do with efforts to make sense of a world that is changing almost too rapidly to comprehend. John Podhortetz wondered today why his approval numbers are so low ans suggested several possible contributory factors:
We aren't winning in Iraq. But in fact, the situation in Iraq has taken a distinct turn for the better, both politically and on the ground, as even harsh Bush critic Barry McCaffrey - a retired general and former Clinton White House official - reports. It may be that the public doesn't know, understand or care all that much about incremental progress, but whatever is happening in Iraq, things certainly aren't getting worse.
Americans are more nervous about the future. That may be true, but if the data show people are indeed better off than they were a few years ago, it's odd for them to be demonstrating such discontent with current leadership. Any president at any time in our history, Democrat or Republican, would have been thrilled to preside over an economy that has behaved the way this one has behaved for the past three years - steady growth, low inflation, sustained job creation, declining unemployment.
Americans are disgusted by Washington. It appears they are - given the low standing of the president, both political parties and both houses of Congress. And they have reason to be dissatisfied, given the growth of pork and the corrupt behavior of various members of Congress. But again, they're expressing an intensity of disgust that doesn't quite correlate with the facts on the ground in D.C.
All three points can easily be incorporated into my thesis. Americans sense that the war in Iraq is not the kind of war that we can easily recognize; it is part of a trans-national battle against expansionary Islam of which we have little comprehension. It is a new and frightening experience that we have enemies who consider all of us targets and are limited only by their means and not at all constrained by their intentions or what we would consider basic human decency. The future is more unknown and unknowable than at any time in the recent past. Certainly, our parents and grandparents who fought WWII faced great uncertainty, but the shape of the world they would live in, whether they won or lost, was predictable in many ways. Today, whether we win or lose to the Islamic fascists, the future feels and is unpredictable in almost every way. If anything, losing to Islamic fascism would eventuate in a more predictable and understandable world than winning! Finally, the disgust has a lot to do with the sense that our politicians are "fiddling" while Rome is threatening to go up in a mushroom cloud. We are facing existential danger and our politicians are fighting over pork; that is part of the past and it is the future that scares us.
At such times, finding recognizable templates for categorizing the world is a way to manage our severe anxieties. If Iraq is Vietnam, we know what to do and how to act; if Ahmadinejad is Hitler (or if Bush is Hitler) we can identify what we are afraid of and by naming it we can help bind up our fears. Unfortunately, Ahmadinejad is not Hitler, he is something much worse, someone who represents those who are willing to destroy the world in order to bring in Utopia. In this way he is more like Pol Pot, but even that falls short of the mark, since Pol Pot wanted to live to maintain power and usher in the Communist Utopia; Ahmadinejad and his followers profess the belief that if they die killing us, they will have Utopia.
Tomorrow, I will discuss how our rapidly accelerating technological development inadvertently serves to compress Iran's time-line.
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